Labels

Sunday, 26 August 2012

Why the decision to lower GCSE English grades must be overturned.

This week thousands of students were given lower grades in
their English GCSE than they expected, which some people probably thought was a
good thing, as it showed that at last someone was making GCSEs tougher and
stopping kids leaving school with hundreds of A* grades and waltzing into sixth
form colleges when in reality they can barely write their own name. Unfortunately,
however sensible it might seem to make GCSEs more challenging, this was a terrible
injustice.

The English GCSE can be taken at two points in the year,
January or June. In January of this year, students needed fewer points to get
their grades than they did in June when the margins were raised significantly.
Gaining a C grade in controlled assessment pieces required an additional three
points out of forty, which meant that many students who had been told by their
teachers to expect a C, suddenly found themselves with a D.

To give students different grades for pieces of work of
the same quality in the same year of assessment is unfair, and also prejudice.
What some people might not realise, especially the privileged people who make
these decisions, is that the students who are most affected by this, the group
we call the C/D borderline, have a raw deal as it is, and the last thing
someone should be doing is making their lives more difficult. Teaching these students
does not involve witty discussions on Shakespeare. They need constant reminders
about how to use paragraphs, when to use complex sentences and how to identify and
explain the use of adjectives. They are missing core English skills because
quite often they are speaking a second language, or grew up in a household
without any books in, or they have been through a series of foster homes, or
suffered emotional and behavioural issues. Predominately, they are working
class, and the last thing someone should be doing is ruining their chances of
going to college and escaping unemployment because GCSE grades need to be
lowered to show voters that exams are becoming more stringent.

So, along with plenty of disappointed teenagers, I am
hoping that in the next few weeks the Education Secretary, Ofqual and the exam
boards make the right decision and forget about targets and politics and give these students the grades they deserve.
Otherwise, they will be doing irreparable damage to the section of society
that most needs their support and protection.